May 8, 2007
Details on Ward 3 meeting, May 21
The next Ward 3 meeting will beÔø?May 21,Ôø?6:30 p.m., at Vernon Johns Middle School. The meeting will be hosted by City Councilman Ken M. Pritchett and School Board Member Kenneth L. Pritchett. Updates will be given on the city and schools.
There will be presentations by:
Ôø?Ôø?Dr. Dorothea Shannon, Chief Academic Officer for Petersburg City Public Schools
Ôø?Ôø?Mr. Edwin Betts, Acting Superintendent for Petersburg City Public Schools
Ôø?Ôø?Annie Harman, Acting Principal for Vernon Johns Middle School
Ôø?Ôø?Delegate Rosalyn R. Dance, (D-63)
Ôø?Ôø?Monique Winfield-Lindsey, Petersburg Health Department
Ôø?Ôø?The following groups will be in attendance with summer program information: Petersburg Parks & Leisure Services, Petersburg City Public Schools Gift & Talented, Petersburg City Library, Virginia Cooperative Extension, YMCA, and Petersburg Boys & Girls Club
A few of the details mentioned at the meeting (it’s late, so I provide only some of the highlights):
* The new Food Lion in Walnut Hill will officially open Wednesday this week.
* City Manager David Canada highlighted three overriding objectives related to the City’s future: 1- in view of the school system’s need for increased funds to attract and retain qualified teachers, and the City’s limited resources, it will be critical for the City and the School to start working together in the very near future on the FY09 budget. 2- in terms of social spending, rather than dealing with social problems only on the back end in a corrective or punitive fashion, the city needs to invest in preventative programs; four areas of particular focus: teen pregnancy, truancy, anger management among youth, and reading. On this last point, the ‘City of Readers’ program aims to stimulate interest in reading, and to emphasize it’s importance. 3- in terms of growth/development, the city must spend in the near term to provide infrastructure to support services (e.g., water, waste water) required of the new apartments and homes currently under development. (Canada also noted that the city looks at whether the projected tax revenues of a development project are expected to cover the costs required to install and maintain these services. When asked what the asking price of the new single-family residences will be, the range given was $189,000 to $269,000; in relation to the new apartments, the range given was $800-$1000/month — please note that these figures were ‘off the top of my head’ numbers, so the actuals may be a bit different.)
* Acting Superintendent informed the meeting that the School Board now has a budget for FY08. He mentioned that teachers will get raises, if not as high as hoped for, and funds for other areas will be somewhat reduced. Nothing more specific was mentioned in this regard.
[...] I post this information on this site because, while†the story†does not†reference Petersburg,†innovations†are innovations, and given Petersburg’s†focus on prevention in addition to†correction, this idea may be of†some interest locally. Posted at 7:28PM under Community, Crime [...]